04/25/2005

TV is Good For You

Cognitive Multitasking
"But another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks."

Learn by Doing
"Many reality shows borrow a subtler device from gaming culture as well: the rules aren't fully established at the outset. You learn as you play."

Emergent Television
"Reality programming borrowed another key ingredient from games: the intellectual labor of probing the system's rules for weak spots and opportunities. As each show discloses its conventions, and each participant reveals his or her personality traits and background, the intrigue in watching comes from figuring out how the participants should best navigate the environment that has been created for them. The pleasure in these shows comes not from watching other people being humiliated on national television; it comes from depositing other people in a complex, high-pressure environment where no established strategies exist and watching them find their bearings."

"Interactive" Television
"You have to focus to follow the plot, and in focusing you're exercising the parts of your brain that map social networks, that fill in missing information, that connect multiple narrative threads."

The New Criteria for Smart Culture
"In pointing out some of the ways that popular culture has improved our minds, I am not arguing that parents should stop paying attention to the way their children amuse themselves. What I am arguing for is a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over ''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand Theft Auto over Quake. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture."

I'm not convinced that television is "Good for You", but I do think American television has improved greatly.

Carnivale, Desperate Housewives, Lost and Battlestar Galactica (as well as 24) are intelligently playing with the usual notions of television viewing.

However, what I am worried about is that while the viewing public may be getting wiser, are the network executives? The success of these shows may cause the networks to drag them out longer than they need to be.

I don't want to see another X-Files, where the story gets so crazy that they lose literally lose the plot, or friends where you lose interest in the characters.

Whilst the public may want a story which is rich and detailed, they also want that story to end, and end appropriately.

I don't want to see Lost turned into Gilligan's Island just so advertisers can get more money.

To be honest, the skills you gain from watching television are ones that most people should already know. Dealing with social networks and detecting "flashing arrows" are basic skills you need to have in order to interact with others. The ability to deal with multiple threads of information is something that people would (I assume) have by nature. It's necessary to keep track of information in different contexts; people do this all the time. Most people are able to keep track of events both at home and at work without any trouble, and I very much doubt this is due to "practice" from watching TV.

In general, I don't think TV, videogames, or reading fiction are particularly good for you, at least not in any fundamental sense. Sure, reading helps improve your vocabulary and reading comprehension, and videogames help improve your ability to process large amounts of information at once, but I rarely use these skills outside of the contexts of games and books. As for TV, well, you're a much more passive participant than with games or books. With games, you obviously have to "push the buttons", and with books, you're forced to imagine the events taking place, since you can't directly perceive them.

In fact, I'd suggest the amount of actual effort you have to put into an activity determines its worth, for the most part. Reading may be nice, but writing certainly does more to help your language skills and to train you to better express your thoughts. I'd also disagree with Johnson and say that watching TV really doesn't require much effort at all. I've never found myself forced to actually *think* about a TV show, but then I do mostly watch shows like Robot Chicken.

Honestly, I think Johnson is trying to justify something that doesn't need to be justified. TV isn't particularly beneficial, but it's a nice distraction. Even "educational" TV isn't that great, and shows on TLC or Discovery tend to focus more on cool explosions or flashy contraptions than actual learning...